Honestly, good on the IOC for actually doing something about it - you can't be having people pay a sh*tton of money to sponsor the games only to have ambush marketers completely devalue that sponsorship.

"Louis Vuitton representatives will say only that they did not release the photos. Leibovitz's press agent says her office did not release the photos. Yet, the Daily Mail contained a quote from a Vuitton representative about the campaign. (That page has since been removed from the newspaper's website.)" --TFA

Phelp's ought to tell the IOC to go stomp turds. Hopefully he has a signed contract stating that the campaign was intended to start after the blackout period, that should be plenty to show that he acted in good faith. He shouldn't take the fall if some dipshiat took it upon themselves to leak things out prematurely.

ChiliBoots:"Louis Vuitton representatives will say only that they did not release the photos. Leibovitz's press agent says her office did not release the photos. Yet, the Daily Mail contained a quote from a Vuitton representative about the campaign. (That page has since been removed from the newspaper's website.)" --TFA

Phelp's ought to tell the IOC to go stomp turds. Hopefully he has a signed contract stating that the campaign was intended to start after the blackout period, that should be plenty to show that he acted in good faith. He shouldn't take the fall if some dipshiat took it upon themselves to leak things out prematurely.

It's not even a ad no Louis Vuitton logos or ad text, just a picture that was going to appear in a ad, they aren't gonna do shiat and have no reason to

GGracie:Subby is sad, sad loser who likes to bring others down to his moldy basement life.

Michael Phelps is an amazing athlete. Nothing will ever change that.

Wow. How do you manage to take offense to that extremely tame and cliché headline?You are not Michael Phelps, and although your cheering had taken off a quarter off his time, I was cheering for someone else more strongly and personally added a third of a second to Phelps' time.And I'd do it again.

Furthermore, he's swimming back and forth in a pool. Is that really your hero?

I heard on olympic coverage somewhere that the olympics is the second most valuable brand in the world.

Even if its close to that... its HUGE business.

They charge companies to be the offical WI FI provider and ban all other wifis in the area. This is a horribly greedy organization. Not that I have a problem with it, but I do have a problem with them still pretending to be about amateur athletics.

Are they really still about that? All the major sports (soccer, basketball, tennis) have pros play. Anyway, if they jack Phelps' medals, I will never watch the Olympics again. Doing an ad has nothing to do with his skill.

CSB time! I worked for possibly the worst start-up company of all time. The stories of stupidity are legendary. The founder of the company made an obscene fortune in the late 90s boom, and got out right before the bubble popped. For some reason, because of this tremendous luck, he was convinced he was both the smartest business man in the world, as well as the most important. He was, in reality, a complete boob who hemorrhaged money with every decision.

Anyhow, he tasked his secretary with coming up with a new logo to outline the core principles of this new company: Fun, Hard Work, Creativity, and a few other words I forget. When she failed to come up with anything he liked, he did it himself. He copied the Olympic rings logo, and wrote one of his core principles inside each of the rings. He splashed this logo all over the web site, publications, etc. Sure enough a month later we get a cease and desist notice from the Olympic Committee's attorneys. He actually called them up and when the receptionist answered barked, "This is [name]. What's the meaning of this?" When he spoke to the lawyers he suggested they should be excited to have his brand and name associated with the Olympics for free. Long story short he got sued and had to scrap his new logo.

Sorry, that was a long story but it's good therapy for me to write it. That was such a horrible place to work.

GGracie:Subby is sad, sad loser who likes to bring others down to his moldy basement life.

Michael Phelps is an amazing athlete. Nothing will ever change that.

Some of us don't receive personal validation by watching somebody we'll never meet swim faster than someone else we'll never meet, just because they happen to be born in the same geopolitical region as us.

THX 1138:Some of us don't receive personal validation by watching somebody we'll never meet swim faster than someone else we'll never meet, just because they happen to be born in the same geopolitical region as us.

Slow To Return:THX 1138: Some of us don't receive personal validation by watching somebody we'll never meet swim faster than someone else we'll never meet, just because they happen to be born in the same geopolitical region as us.

Yeah, that was a pretty big leap in logic. It's sports. People who like sports tend to like watching competitions because.... and I'm not trying to speak for everyone here.... it seems like we're competitive ourselves. I didn't know we had to personally know someone before we could enjoy watching them consistently beat the hell out of their world-class competitors. That doesn't personally validate me. I can derive pleasure out of something without it being a validating issue.

And as far as the geopolitical region thing goes, few things can unite Americans the way the Olympics do. Let us have our thing. Phelps! Douglas! Curiosity! USA! USA! USA!

THX 1138:GGracie: Subby is sad, sad loser who likes to bring others down to his moldy basement life.

Michael Phelps is an amazing athlete. Nothing will ever change that.

Some of us don't receive personal validation by watching somebody we'll never meet swim faster than someone else we'll never meet, just because they happen to be born in the same geopolitical region as us.

It's not all just about his athletic ability ;-) I will never meet him... don't even care that he's from this country. He is a great athlete... But sweet Jesus does he look good in a Speedo!I played Water Polo in high school on a team that was mostly male. I could have played any sport I wanted, but when I found out that I could be on a team, in the water, with those gorgeous bodies... DAMN STRAIGHT I played Water Polo ;-)

John is your typical Olympic athlete. He's not particularly famous nor is he expected to medal. He's young enough that he could compete again in 4 years and possibly improve enough to medal then.

John is not wealthy and does not come from a wealthy family. He pays for training and medical bills resulting from training with sponsorship money.

The Olympics represent John's best opportunity for the next four years to get his name out to people. Even though he is not particularly famous, he's going to be watched by untold millions of people. This makes him very attractive to sponsors. Get enough sponsorships for the Olympics and that might pay for the next four years of training and medical bills.

Rule 40, however, puts a serious damper on the motivation for people to sponsor Olympic athletes. The majority of these athletes fund their training through sponsorship money. They are in the Olympics because of sponsors. Rule 40 directly threatens the ability of athletes to train for the Olympics and will likely result in a decrease of athletic quality at the Olympics.

John is your typical Olympic athlete. He's not particularly famous nor is he expected to medal. He's young enough that he could compete again in 4 years and possibly improve enough to medal then.

John is not wealthy and does not come from a wealthy family. He pays for training and medical bills resulting from training with sponsorship money.

The Olympics represent John's best opportunity for the next four years to get his name out to people. Even though he is not particularly famous, he's going to be watched by untold millions of people. This makes him very attractive to sponsors. Get enough sponsorships for the Olympics and that might pay for the next four years of training and medical bills.

Rule 40, however, puts a serious damper on the motivation for people to sponsor Olympic athletes. The majority of these athletes fund their training through sponsorship money. They are in the Olympics because of sponsors. Rule 40 directly threatens the ability of athletes to train for the Olympics and will likely result in a decrease of athletic quality at the Olympics.

Rule 40 is an OK rule.

To make a successful Olympics that John can use to get known and his face to become well known needs billions of £/$'s to build state of the art stadiums, venues and housing. No country could possible afford to spend that amount of money when it could be spent on education, healthcare or infrastructure. So an outside money source is needed and the only one avliable are sponsors. To get the most money out of sponsors you need exclusive sponsorship deals.

So the choice is either a two bit half arsed olympics that isn't going to get Johns face on ceral boxes or rule 40 that will allow John to become a well known star.

Norfolking Chance:To make a successful Olympics that John can use to get known and his face to become well known needs billions of £/$'s to build state of the art stadiums, venues and housing. No country could possible afford to spend that amount of money when it could be spent on education, healthcare or infrastructure. So an outside money source is needed and the only one avliable are sponsors. To get the most money out of sponsors you need exclusive sponsorship deals.

So the choice is either a two bit half arsed olympics that isn't going to get Johns face on ceral boxes or rule 40 that will allow John to become a well known star.

Funny how all of those previous Olympics before rule 40 seemed to do just fine without exclusive sponsorship deals.

ZoSo_the_Crowe:Funny how all of those previous Olympics before rule 40 seemed to do just fine without exclusive sponsorship deals.

No they didn't. They were slower and strategically worse at every component of every event. Sponsorships mean more full time athletes, which means better performances. We want to get progressively better at this stuff, not worse. That requires a lifetime of dedication and training, which is only attainable through sponsorships.

Ishkur:ZoSo_the_Crowe: Funny how all of those previous Olympics before rule 40 seemed to do just fine without exclusive sponsorship deals.

No they didn't. They were slower and strategically worse at every component of every event. Sponsorships mean more full time athletes, which means better performances. We want to get progressively better at this stuff, not worse. That requires a lifetime of dedication and training, which is only attainable through sponsorships.

Ishkur:ZoSo_the_Crowe: Funny how all of those previous Olympics before rule 40 seemed to do just fine without exclusive sponsorship deals.

No they didn't. They were slower and strategically worse at every component of every event. Sponsorships mean more full time athletes, which means better performances. We want to get progressively better at this stuff, not worse. That requires a lifetime of dedication and training, which is only attainable through sponsorships.

Um, yeah, I'm on your side here dude.

I meant the previous Olympics themselves, not the athletic performances, seemed to do just fine without rule 40.

ZoSo_the_Crowe:Rule 40, however, puts a serious damper on the motivation for people to sponsor Olympic athletes.

Well, that's not really how the sponsorships work, so no, it won't. First of all, Olympians are irrelevant to the Olympics. If John doesn't compete, then Jack will. People tune in because it's the Olympics, not because of John.

If someone is sponsoring John, they are free to celebrate their sponsorship of John...they just have to do it outside of those couple weeks (and they can even do it during the competition, they just can't use images). So when John gets back to his country, he's still got enough pull that his sponsors can say "hell yeah, we're proud sponsors of John, who brought back gold for Team USA!" (other countries don't care nearly as much because usually they are government-funded). If John doesn't medal and no one wants to sponsor him, then his dreams die, like they do for 90 percent of the population that stop playing sports because there are more important things to do.

Basically, sucks to be John, but no one cares about the mediocre field-fillers unless they have a cool backstory. Also, what idiot company is going to run an ad campaign around someone who isn't expected to get any coverage in the Olympics?

ZoSo_the_Crowe:Funny how all of those previous Olympics before rule 40 seemed to do just fine without exclusive sponsorship deals.

Funny how this Olympics did just fine with exclusive sponsorship deals.